I had this idea of where I should be in middle age, an image that had been born in the 1950s when I’d been a child watching Lassie on TV. As outdated as it was, that blurred snapshot somewhere at the back of my mind actually did have a green lawn, a house, a picket fence, and two kids: a boy and a girl. In the corner, there was my husband in a suit coming home from work. And was that me at the front door in an apron? Did every woman my age have a similar snapshot in their mental scrapbook? In the decades since Lassie, maybe I’d managed to update the picture some. I’d erased the apron and added a home office instead. Still, there it was. And here I was, nowhere near it. In this engaging collection, editor Maud Lavin has enlisted seven talented writers to share their stories of midlife transitions, reflecting the unpredictable challenges and unexpected graces that characterize this multilayered stage of life. The writers—Kim Larsen, Calvin Forbes, Ellen McMahon, Allan deSouza, Peggy...